Two Degrees of Separation from David Foster Wallace

[mallorys_camera]

I’d completely forgotten it was Halloween weekend and therefore was completely unprepared for the costumes and the chaos in Grand Central Station when I got into the city yesterday. Many of the costumes were bizarre and unsettling. Is this the channeling of some kind of collective unrest because it’s an election year?

The subway into Brooklyn took me past the stop I used to get off at to visit Alice Turner.

Alice turns up a lot in the David Foster Wallace bio. A prominent secondary character. DFW broke up his first engagement by sleeping with her, and she served as his literary mentor for many years, writing him chastising letters when the dialogue in a story he sold to Playboy turned out to include large chunks of dialogue he’d plagiarized from the David Letterman Show.

Since Alice was also my literary mentor – she bought the very first story I ever wrote at Clarion for what seemed to me at the time to be an ungodly amount of money – and was always incredibly generous to me, putting me up in her beautiful apartment on numerous occasions, I supposed that gives me a kind of two degrees of separation relationship with DFW.

It’s very odd to think of the always soignée and impeccably groomed Alice naked with her arms around a thrusting DFW. Alice was so fastidious; DFW was notorious for sweating a lot and in all his photographs, he just kinda looks like he smelled funny.

I wonder about that excessive sweating thing.

DFW was one of the very few humans that I might agree suffered from some endogenous biochemical form of depression. With most people, I think depression is situational – an extremely unpopular theory, I know, I know! But I truly believe that if these people were able to remove themselves from the situations that make them unhappy, they’d be asymptomatic. For various reasons, most of them are stuck, so big pharma becomes richer and richer.

DFW’s excessive sweating, though, might seem to indicate that something was off in his hypothalamus. And that would throw the rest of his endocrines off, too. And endocrines are brain chemicals; they control moods.

Anyhoo, if Alice boffed DFW, she almost certainly boffed Lucius, too.

As well as I knew Lucius, that thought actually creeps me out.

###

Arrived at R____’s apartment. When R____ and I talked a week ago, we debated the history of the building she lives in with its oddly apportioned rooms.

But standing in front of the building this time, I could see very clearly that it was an old brownstone that someone had slapped really hideous siding on to. There’s a massive, unusable fireplace in the living room that looks to have been hewn from some exotic hardwood and has those pineapple carvings that were so very popular in the early 20th century. That seems to bear out my theory. Also a strange little skylight with old-fashioned, triangular glass panes. So, yes: an old brownstone. That might explain the gnarled old apple tree I saw last week, too. So very Tom’s Midnight Garden!

R____ also left me money. Which really floored me. As if getting to occupy a lovely little nest in NYC for a week and hang out with a most sweet-tempered cat was not reward enough. It’s exactly the amount of money that I overspent on my care package to Max, so I’m looking at it as a gift from the universe.

“Hello, Opal!” I told the kitty when I brought in my suitcase. “Your two great fearsome feline allies, Meezer the Pouncer and Sir Rutger L’Orange, send you greetings from the North!”

Opal immediately meowed and jumped on to my lap.

Comments

[petrona.livejournal.com]

It's a beautiful day out. Are you anywhere near Chelsea? That's where I am currently and wouldn't mind a walk on the Highline with you.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh! I wish I'd emailed you that I was coming to NYC because I would have really enjoyed hanging out with you in Chelsea!

I'll be back, I'm sure, and I will definitely let you know when I am.

[lifeinroseland.livejournal.com]

I believe in biochemical depression, but I also believe that a lot of people, a lot of the time, forget to use the word: sad. So they do get stuck in their "situational depression."

That man's not in costume! That is what he wears. I've seen him around other times of the year.

Cool about Alice.

I'm not huge on biographies, but eventually I'll have to get to D's.

[cah1470.livejournal.com]

The idea that's his normal attire is actually more frightening than if it were a costume.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Ha, ha. You don't spend much time in NYC, I take it? :-)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

That is what he wears.

You're making me feel like a tourist!!!!! :-)

[lifeinroseland.livejournal.com]

Hahaha... He makes me feel like a tourist.

It's the hair that makes me look, every time. The rest of it flows through I guess.

Now there's two degrees of separation right there, too.

--

Ooooh, I thought you'd said it! I only skimmed this time, but I guess I didn't read carefully the first time? Anyway, fun thought.

[therobertpaul.livejournal.com]

I think depression is situational – I won’t speak for others, but this is true of me. Of course, the dipshit shrinks treated me as if I had chronic chemical depression instead someone who found himself living a shitty life overnight. They spoke to me in a patronizing way and handed me samples.

Hope you have fun adventures in NY. It will give me something fun to follow while I’m recovering from surgery.

Speaking of literary mentors: the rewrite of the book you were kind enough to edit is going well.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad you're working on the book! Have you already had the surgery? Happy recovery!

[christies-world.livejournal.com]

I am not an easily depressed person, but the one time I was depressed it was 100% situational (father being a dipshit at a level he'd previously never sunk to, prolonged unemployment, winter, living alone, relationship falling apart). At the time, though, it was hard to see how I could possibly get beyond it, how my life had been anything other than that. I think that inability to imagine the end of the situational depression is exactly where big pharma saw an opportunity.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yep.

I mean, I think there are situations that warrant the use of antidepressant medications, but I also think they are waaaaaaay over-prescribed.

lifeinroseland makes the interesting point above that there used to be a mood that was called "sad." :-)